Restructuring specialist and former FN100 individual Lesley Lynn has retired from Citigroup after almost four decades with the bank.

Lynn ended a 37-year career with the bank last week, having joined Citibank as an executive trainee straight out of Oxford University in 1977.

“When I first arrived, all that was on my desk was an old fashioned phone and an ash tray," Lynn said. "Now, the most junior people have very high-powered personal computing."

She added: "The evolution of technology has meant that the pace of banking business has accelerated. While it has brought some very significant benefits to our clients, the danger is that there’s no time to reflect and contemplate on what the right decision is.”

Lynn, who was one of Citi's first senior leaders to work four-day weeks, had a varied career at the bank. She moved to Venezuela in 1981, where she spent two years advising global clients such as Ford, General Electric and L'Oréal from the bank's corporate office. She then moved back to London and spent almost a decade inside the bank’s airlines department, where she helped finance some of the first western aircraft carriers to enter the Eastern Bloc.

In 1994 she rose up the ranks to become head of telecommunications and media, before setting up and heading Citi's institutional recovery management unit in 2001. She stepped down from the role 2010, the year she was named in the FN100 Women list of the most influential women in European finance, and went on to focus on capital allocation across Citi's Emea corporate and investment banking operations.

Although she has retired, Lynn is now expected to enter a "second phase" of her career, most likely to take the shape of a non-executive position on the board of a bank or a not-for-profit organisation.

“Once you’ve retired there are a lot of exciting opportunities," Lynn admits. "I would really like to be contributing to the non-profit sector, or the local community. There really is life after the executive world.”

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And as her 37-year career at Citi comes to a close, Lynn's youngest son Henry has chosen to follow in her footsteps, recently joining the bank's London office as an intern.

“One of the things I would say, to anyone starting out in banking, is that it has to have value to the whole economy – it’s not about making money for the bank, it’s about contributing value to the wider economy and to the client," she said. "If you stick to measuring everything you do to that yardstick, it will stand you in good stead.”

She added: "Like any job, it had its dull moments and its difficult moments, but by and large I loved it. It [Citi] was a great place to work."